THINKING AHEAD TO WINTER

It seems strange to be thinking about the winter holiday season in the middle of summer, but if I’ve learned anything in this business it is that everything requires far more lead time than I’d like, or than I can even imagine. Right now the lovely red-and-green fuschias in the garden remind me that I should be thinking about what I’d like to do for this year’s December holiday gift box, if I do one. Last year’s was pretty much a spur-of-the-moment, simple collection of a spray perfume, soap, all-purpose body/hair/bath oil, and a music CD in a generic, colorful cardboard box packed with tissue paper. Anything more requires advance planning.

I have some ideas, but would also like to throw out some questions for you, the perfume-loving public. If you answer all of the questions, you will be entered in a drawing to win a 15 ml bottle of the Olympic Orchids fragrance of your choice, so it’s worth your while! Here goes:

1. Do you like holiday gift sets of any kind, to keep, give, or receive? Generic gift sets?  Frankly, I’m not big on any of them myself, but everyone is different.

2. Would you buy a gift set for yourself or someone else? (The perfume community is one place where we all know that it’s OK to buy gifts for ourselves!)

3. What items (and sizes) would you like to see in a gift set?

4. Would you like a fancy box with a custom-made insert to fit the items, or a simple cardboard box with tissue paper wrapping? Or do you prefer some other type of packaging?

5. Do you like a single theme with one fragrance in different products (e.g., perfume, oil, soap) multiple fragrances in the same type of product (e.g., several perfumes), or a random mix of all-different fragrances and products? 

6. Do you like for gift sets to include any non-fragrance items and/or a coupon for a $ amount or percentage off of an order?

7. What price range would you be willing to pay for the type of gift set that you describe?

8. Any other comments about gift sets?

I’ll be really interested to see your answers to these questions and any other observations that you care to contribute. The drawing will take place on Thursday, August 15. 

[food (or drink?) gift set photos taken from manufacturers' postings] 

VOLUNTEER ORCHIDS AND MIRABELLES

It’s always a treat to find useful or beautiful plants that I didn’t plant growing in the garden. Everywhere else I’ve lived and done anything resembling gardening, my rule of thumb was that I needed to plant 10 things to get one that survived. Here in the Pacific Northwest, I plant 10 things and end up with a hundred like the one I planted, and other, different ones that seem to come out of nowhere by spontaneous generation.

This summer there have been several surprises, but two of them are really special. The first is the volunteer orchid, Sipranthes romanzoffiana, also called hooded lady's tresses, a native terrestrial orchid that must have blown in from somewhere last winter. Back in the spring I saw a small rosette of thin green leaves that looked a little like a hyacinth plant. I assumed that’s what it was, because the squirrels have a habit of transplanting bulbs, digging them up to nibble on, then burying what’s left for another meal.  A few weeks ago the leaves started dying down, but a flower spike started coming up. It’s now about 45 cm (18 inches) tall, with loosely spiraling rows of white flowers, most of which are open. And the flowers are fragrant! They have a sweet, airy, vanilla-floral scent that seems to attract bumblebees. Orchids are always welcome in my garden even if, technically, they’re weeds.

The second big surprise was a shoot that came up from the roots of a purple-leaf ornamental plum that we planted several years ago. Apparently the ornamental plum had been grafted onto a rootstock of another variety, and the rootstock decided to grow on its own. This year, when I was clearing blackberries away from the base of the tree, I was amazed to see little fruits all over the branches of the renegade tree. They looked like mirabelles, a blush red variety. A few had dropped on the ground, and when I tasted them they were indeed mirabelles. What a bonus! We now have a beautiful pink-flowered ornamental tree that blooms spectacularly in spring, and next to it, like a siamese twin, a highly productive white-flowered mirabelle plum tree. I harvested a few today by shaking the tree. These tree-ripened fruits are tasty and sweet, with a flowery, concentrated plum flavor, much better than the big, sour plums they sell in the supermarket. I love volunteer plants!

DISTILLING LAVENDER WITH MESHA MUNYAN

On a gloriously sunny day earlier this week, Michael and I joined our friends Gail and Brad and perfumer David Falsberg for a day of lavender distilling at Mesha Munyan’s farm out on the Olympic Peninsula. Mesha has been growing and distilling lavender for many years and has recently established a natural perfume company, Meshaz. She won numerous gold medals at the Seattle Artisan Perfume Salon earlier this summer.

The lavender bloomed early this year, so we were lucky to get in on the tail end of distilling season. Mesha grows many different varieties of lavender and when we arrived we found the one she was going to distill that day drying on cloth sheets on the porch, next to where the still is set up.

We got to participate in the entire process, from start to finish. To begin with, we went out in the fields to smell the different varieties of lavender plants and learn how to harvest it with a curved, serrated knife. We gathered one type that was currently in bloom into bunches that would be hung to dry once we were back in the house. For distillation, it would just be spread out in mass on a cloth to dry.

Mesha uses a simple alembic-type still, fired by a propane gas burner. As the water heated, we took turns stuffing the dried lavender into the still until it was full. She then put the onion-shaped top on and sealed the neck to the condenser component, basically a metal coil submerged in a bucket of circulating water.

We all waited in anticipation, and it wasn’t long until the first drops of liquid began to appear, followed by a thin stream that was caught in a tall container that slowly released the heavier, aqueous phase into a bucket below while allowing the lighter oil phase to collect on top. We all took turns smelling the oil as it came out of the still. Delicious!

Once all of the oil was collected, it was put in a separatory funnel to finish removing the aqueous phase and the small layer of dark colored stuff at the interface between the oil and water. The oil was then bottled and put aside to age. At this point the spent lavender had to be extracted from the still and collected in a wheelbarrow to use as mulch on the lavender plants.

The whole process was not only fun, but an amazing learning experience. The distillation process is fairly easy in theory, but there are so many variables that it takes a great deal of knowledge and experience to do it right. Mesha is a master at it! The little samples of lavender oil that we all got to take home attest to that.

WE ALL MAKE STUPID MISTAKES

The title of this post says it all.  A few weeks ago, when I was mixing up a batch of Tropic of Capricorn, I reached for the maile vine-mango fruit tincture that I use to dilute the concentrate, but accidentally picked up a hibiscus flower tincture that I’d been saving for who knows what purpose. The bottle was the same, it looked roughly similar in color, and it was sitting on the shelf next to the tincture that I intended to use. I was in a hurry and didn’t discover the mistake until it was too late, when I looked at the label on the bottle and realized what I’d done.

It just stands to reason that if I were going to screw up on mixing a formula, it would be the one with the most expensive materials in it. That’s a lot of osmanthus, frangipani, jasmine, and other good things wasted. All those flowers that gave their lives to make the absolutes. I decided to go ahead and age and filter the stuff and see how it turned out.

Actually, it’s not that much different from the real formula. It’s missing some of the warm, fruity nuances of the original, but is still a powerful tropical floral scent. What I have decided to do is bottle it and sell it at a bargain price, under a different name – Tropic of Capricorn Hibiscus - an accidental flanker, if you will. That makes me speculate about the origin of flankers. Were some of them formulas of the original that someone screwed up on?

It also made me think about a possible way to balance my insatiable drive to make more and more perfumes with the need to restrict my regular line to a manageable number of fragrances. The solution would be a series of single-batch perfumes that would be sold one at a time until that batch is gone, to then be replaced by another, different, single-batch formula. They would be hand-labeled, but possibly bottled in either super-basic bottles or special, fancy bottles. What I have in mind isn’t meant to be an “exclusive”, ridiculously-priced collector’s-item sort of thing, it would just be a fun art form, a way to share my noodling around in the lab with others, and a way to use small amounts of materials that I can’t be sure of getting more of on a regular basis in the foreseeable future.

Does the single-batch strategy seem like a good idea? Or does it just make the selection more complicated and overwhelming?

[Hibiscus flower and mad Martian chemist images adapted from Wikimedia] 

BLOOMING OUT OF SEASON

What’s going on with my orchids? Three of the big ones that normally bloom in winter are blooming now, completely the reverse of what I’ve come to expect. Cattleya aurantiaca has been blooming for weeks now, with two growths each bearing an uncountable number of bright orange flowers, and another growth about ready to pop out another spray of flowers. Unfortunately, this one is just colorful, not fragrant, so I’m only writing about it as a case study in blooming at the wrong time. 

The second one to bloom is Cattleya jenmannii, with one growth in full bloom today with 4 big, delicate-looking flowers worthy of an old-style prom corsage. The plant has two more growths with different stages of developing buds. Cattleya jenmannii flowers are fragrant, so when I found the blooming plant in the greenhouse, I brought it inside.  I’m looking forward to the indolic, fruity-floral scent perfuming the house for the next few weeks. The third plant that’s ready to bloom is Lc Netrasiri, the iconic Red Cattleya of perfume fame, a plant that I’ve had for years and always thought of as a winter solstice bloomer. It’s just rammed out a huge stalk with at least 8 fat flower buds! These flowers will put on quite a display, both visually and fragrance-wise, once they open.

So why are all of these winter bloomers blooming in July? Could it be global climate change doing weird things to the orchids, making them think that they’ve moved from the northern to the southern hemisphere? That doesn’t seem likely, given that day length hasn’t changed, and I would think that would be one strong signal for orchids to bloom. It has been a little sunnier than usual this spring, but lots of sunlight doesn't send the right message to winter bloomers.

Another theory has to do with the fact that all of these plants are getting old and bulky, and consequently I can’t keep up with repotting them. As a result, most of the roots hang out of the pot. I have no idea why exposed roots would make cattleyas bloom out of season, but it’s a theory.

Another theory is that these plants have gotten so big that they can afford to bloom twice a year instead of just once, and will bloom again in winter. This would be the best possible explanation for their odd behavior. I guess I’ll just have to enjoy their summer blooming spree and wait till winter to see if they want to do it again in December.